Obama Fires Up His Campaign Cash Machine. With the GOP eager to exploit relaxed spending restrictions, the President is asking top "bundlers" to raise far more than they did for 2008 Presumably, he's removed the illegal donation software from his online donation site as well.

In other words, for the poorest 20% of Americans (who make less than $20,000 a year, with an average income of $11,500), taxes go from about $460 to about $920. For the middle quintile (making an average of $50,000 a year), taxes go from around $7,000 to over $12,000. For those in the top quintile, with an average income of $167,000, taxes jump from a $41,000 to $62,000.

Turn it around and look at the effect on incomes: after tax incomes drop from $11,040 to $10,580**, in the lowest quintile; from $43,000 to $38,500 in the middle quintile; and from$125,000 to $105,000. And the higher you go, the stronger the effect is; for the top 1% (which starts at AGI of $400,000), you reduce their minimum income from a bottom of roughly $275,000 to perhaps $210,000, either through taxes, or through lower capital income as a result of higher corporate income taxes*.

Can this be done? Maybe. Probably, at least on the lower tiers, who don't respond to tax rates the way the wealthy can. But it won't be easy or moderate. I'm sure there are a number of people in my readership where two spouses take home $125,000 between them. How easily can you guys chop $20,000 out of your budget? And though the percentages are lower, in practical effect it's even worse for the bottom: if you're making minimum wage, $460 is several weeks worth of paychecks.

Now, if you don't want to take more money from the lower quintiles, you have to take even more from the top quintiles. But the effective tax rate on the top 1% is already almost 50% if we raise all taxes by the same amount. Those people also pay other taxes: property taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes. How much of their income do we think the state can claim? How much do we think it should claim?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Gotta love the Internet and the fact that nothing is ever lost on it. So why if it was such a big deal that McCain was born in Panama when his father was serving on a US military base there back in 2008 that they had to pass a resolution saying McCain could serve. If that was a big deal, why didn't the media investigate Obama in the same way?

The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has taken a crack at deciphering President Barack Obama’s murky new budget plan, called the “Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility.” And its findings are devastating:

Just like in my analysis here and here, the CRFB found that the Ryan Plan cuts more debt than the Obama Plan. Also note that while the White House said its plan relied just 25 percent on higher taxes (33 percent if you exclude interest), the CFRB found that it actually relies 30 percent on higher tax revenue (40 percent if you exclude interest.) And since the debt trigger would be pulled, even higher taxes would be possible, as well additional spending cuts.

Why is the latest move by the NLRB against Boeing important? It impacts all levels of the American economy when an unelected government quango gets to tell any business how it must run its business. That's why it is important.

This could well be the most outrageous insult yet to the free market economy:

In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.

Do I need to explain how many kinds of wrong this is? Not only is the federal government saying to Boeing that it gets to decide where it puts its production lines, it's telling South Carolina it may as well not enact laws designed to attract investment. All that's missing are the words "Five Year Plan."

Don’t Keep Hope Alive "Wisconsin’s official Government Accountability Board has now investigated the election results in Waukesha County and found no reason to overturn the results that gave Supreme Court Justice David Prosser a 7,300 vote victory over his labor-backed challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg."

Kloppenburg - Full Statewide Recount ("Kloppenburg's Folly") From "CoolHandLuke" in the comments is a very good point (hat tip: Instapundit) "Let's see ... first she immediately (some cynics might say waaaaaay toooo prematurely) declared victory with a scant 200 or so vote lead when only preliminary totals were in. Chutzpah!!"